“As the panel of three federal judges prepares to issue its ruling on district lines for the Texas House of Representatives, I hope that the judges will take into account the will of the people of Texas as expressed by their elected representatives.

“I, along with many Members of the House, have strong concerns that the initial map released by the court last week goes much further than is necessary to correct any perceived legal defects in the recently-adopted redistricting plan.

“Members of the Texas House approved a redistricting plan that is fair and that the State’s lawyers have advised us is legal. Even if the panel of judges concludes that the new lines violate federal law in some respects, their role should be limited to making as few revisions as possible to cure those perceived defects, instead of making wholesale changes to the duly elected map.

“If the final order of the court is not substantially closer to the plan we passed, I will urge the Attorney General to seek an immediate stay from the U.S. Supreme Court so that several issues under the Voting Rights Act can be clarified before the federal judges impose their new map on Texas voters for the 2012 elections.”

Blah blah blah mean ol’ Republican-appointed activist judges…Clearly we need some other activist judges to step in and correct the error made by some other activist judges who did something we don’t like. Even if that means moving back the primaries, which wouldn’t be disruptive at all. The irony of this is that the court-drawn map is likely to be friendlier to Straus’ re-election as Speaker than the one the Lege drew. But certain ritualistic obligations must be met.

Meanwhile, Burka notes that various Republican legislators are none too happy with Abbott’s office for their role in pushing preclearance to the DC court and for losing the battle to get summary judgment. He also has some whining from doomed Republican HD144 incumbent Ken Legler. In that same post, he suggests that there may be some discontent on the D side as well:

Mike Hailey’s Capitol Inside reports that African-American members and support groups are not happy with the court-drawn maps either, which involve significant changes to districts that break up communities of interest.

African-Americans who’ve been involved in the court fight over redistricting that Democrats and minority groups have been waging contend that the House map that a pair of federal judges in San Antonio proposed last week is inferior from their perspective to the plan that the Republican-controlled Legislature approved earlier this year.

This has the potential to turn into a nasty fight–not just R’s against D’s, but also blacks against browns. Hispanics are the clear winners to this point, and African Americans (and, of course, anglo Republicans) saw their communities of interest disrupted for no obvious Voting Rights Act purpose. I don’t see how this often-arbitrary map can withstand a trial on the merits.

That sounds pretty bad, until you read the brief that was filed by the NAACP-Jefferson plaintiff-intervenors. They ask for a grand total of 42 precincts (I counted) to be interchanged in Dallas and Harris Counties, mostly between neighboring African-American districts – 23 of the 42 precincts in all. Seventeen precincts, all in Harris County, would be swapped between African-American and Latino districts (this includes HD137, which has a Latino voting majority if not a Latino representative) and exactly two precincts between a Democratic district and a Republican district (HDs 146 and 134). In other words, these changes are pretty darned unlikely to affect the partisan balance that might result from Plan H298. In addition, there’s this footnote on page 3:

We understand that the State has mis-used the constructive comment of the NAACP-Jefferson plaintiff-intervenors in unwarranted attacks on the Court’s efforts. We wish to disassociate ourselves from such criticism. While we regard these changes as exceedingly important, indeed essential, to a racially fair redistricting plan, we understand the virtual inevitability of unintended circumstances, especially in such a short time period.

In other words, they may both be asking for changes, but they have very different reasons for doing so. I fully expect that there will be some changes to the interim map, but I do not expect them to be more than tweaks like what the NAACP-Jefferson plaintiff-intervenors have offered. You’ve got to figure we’ll know soon enough. For that matter, you’ve got to figure there’s a Congressional map in there somewhere. I don’t mean to rush you, Your Honors, but, um, tick tock.

UPDATE: Michael Li explains what must happen for the Supreme Court to step in and put a halt to the implementation of the interim maps.

2 Comments

[…] exploding over so-called “activist judges”, they only have their own party to blame as Kuff so succinctly points out. Blah blah blah mean ol’ Republican-appointed activist judges…Clearly we need some other […]